100 Years of Silence

One hundred years ago, the Herero people of Namibia were nearly exterminated by German colonial soldiers in what has become known as the first genocide of the 20th century.

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100 Years of Silence

100 Years of Silence

In the colonial period, the Herero men, women and children of Namibia were rounded up like cattle and put into Germany’s first ever concentration camps. Four years later, three-quarters of the entire Herero nation had perished at the hands of German colonialists.

The central figure of 100 Years of Silence is a contemporary 23-year-old Herero woman named Georgina. She has a fair complexion and a green tinge to her eyes. Georgina is aware of the fact that her great grandmother was raped by a German soldier and now wants to confront the demons of her own genetic past.

Together with the film crew, Georgina sets out into the Namibian landscape on what becomes a journey of deep introspection. Her journey takes place against the breathtaking backdrop of Africa’s landscapes – an aesthetic harmony-broken repeatedly by a dissonant history.

The Nazis used the experiences from the German Konzentration Camps in Namibia plus their experiences with racial science during the Second World War a few decades later. Today the Hereros claim billions of US dollars from the German government in genocide reparations.